Since the Cavaliers felt like they didn’t have to put forth maximum effort tonight against the Nets, I am going to assume that its okay I don’t put forth maximum effort in my re-cap post either. Prior to watching, I did want to though, I promise. But a game that takes Devin Harris hitting Jamario Moon in the head with 3:48 left to get the Cavs players – and multiple fans throughout the Q – to literally wake up out of a drooling sleep is just difficult to write about.

I could write about all the negatives in tonight’s game though, but I don’t want to. What I wanted to talk about was how the Cavs treated the Nets like a jv squad, and dominated them from start to finish. I also wanted to belabour the point about how awful the now 2-23 Nets are. I wanted to argue that 10 players on the Cavs’ roster could have started for New Jersey tonight. I wanted to say that Shaq dropped an early O’Doyle rules on the Jersey front-line with 9 first quarter points, and then bullied his way to a season high 30+. I wanted to poke fun at how ridiculous the speculation that LeBron James would opt to sign with the worst franchise in the NBA next season really is. But after watching those Nets hang in the game all night long, during the most boring Cavs’ win in the last two years, I decided none of that really made sense talking about.

Brook Lopez gets the player of the game award for me with 22 pts/15 rebs, and before getting ejected, Devin Harris kicked in 22 for the bad guys.

For the Cavs,LeBron had 23 points, 7 dimes, but the brightest individual performance was shared on the Cleveland side by their combination of centers. Z and Shaq combined to go 14 of 18 from the field for 32 points (they each had 16 on 7 of 9 shooting). And the other bright-spot, all kidding aside, would be that they did win, and at the end of the year, that’s probably all we’ll remember right? Assuming you didn’t pay to get in?

Up next for the Cavs (17-7) is a trip to Philly to take on the Sixers (6-18) tomorrow night. Iverson will be there if you didn’t hear. And in case you also missed why Delonte was inactive tonight, Brian Windhorst has the latest up on Cleveland.com,right here.

About Brendan Bowers

I am the founding editor of StepienRules.com. I am also a content strategist and social media manager with Electronic Merchant Systems in Cleveland. My work has been published in SLAM Magazine, KICKS Magazine, The Locker Room Magazine, Cleveland.com, BleacherReport.com, InsideFacebook.com and elsewhere. I've also written a lot of articles that have been published here.